Four journalists die in ambush near Kabul

20 Nov, 2001 12:22 AM3 mins to read

11:00 am

BRUSSELS - Four journalists ambushed as they drove in a convoy from Afghanistan's eastern city of Jalalabad to the capital Kabul, have been confirmed dead.

Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero has told reporters at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels: "Through contacts with the crisis unit there, we have evidence that the four bodies found correspond to the four journalists."

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) quoted officials in Jalalabad as saying the reporters had been made to step out of their vehicles and had been shot on the spot.

The four killed were Reuters reporters Australian television cameraman Harry Burton, and Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer, journalist Julio Fuentes of Spain's El Mundo and reporter Maria Grazia Cutuli, aged 39, of Italy's Corriere della Sera.

The deaths bring the number of journalists killed during the US strikes against Afghanistan to seven.

Two French radio correspondents and a German freelance reporter died in an ambush by Taleban forces in the northeast on November 11.

Denouncing what it said were "outrageous, barbaric acts", the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) called on the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance and the United States-led coalition to bring those responsible to justice.

RSF warned journalists not to leave cities recently taken by the anti-Taleban forces without armed guards able to defend them against remnants of the routed fundamentalist forces or pro-Taleban foreign fighters.

The dead reporters were travelling in an eight-vehicle convoy through the eastern province of Nangarhar when armed men stopped them near a bridge at Tangi Abrishum, some 90km east of Kabul, according to journalists who escaped the ambush.

The RSF statement said most of the journalists in the convoy travelling to Kabul had arrived on Sunday from Pakistan under the protection of Haji Mohammad Zaman, a former commander in the war against the Soviet Union.

They left on Monday for Kabul without an armed guard, officials in Jalalabad told RSF, and drove for about two hours before six armed men blocking the road ambushed them.

"They (the armed men) let the Afghan drivers leave the vehicles and told the Westerners to follow them. A few metres away, the attackers opened fire on the journalists. One of them was hit in the face," RSF said.

"The six other vehicles turned around and returned to Jalalabad, where they gave an alarm. Commander Zaman has confirmed to RSF that a group of at least 50 mujahideen had left for the scene of the crime to try to recover the bodies and establish the circumstances of the killings.

"We can only recommend to journalists to ask mujahideen commanders or local authorities for armed escorts when they leave cities controlled by the anti-Taleban forces."

RSF said that three journalists from Radio France Internationale had been attacked and robbed by a group of young bandits along the road to Kabul on Sunday.

Some Filipino journalists had also been robbed there the same day, it added.

Most of eastern Afghanistan was taken over by anti-Taleban tribal leaders last week, but pockets of Taleban and Arab fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network are believed to be roaming in many parts of the country.

Several convoys of journalists have driven along the road to Kabul from Jalalabad in the past few days.

Italian Foreign Minister Ruggiero said the bodies of the four journalists would be flown home via the Red Cross in Kabul.

- REUTERS

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